Navajo Jewelry

Navajo Jewelry

Contemporary Navajo jewelry shows dynamism and innovation as modern artists build on the foundation of early silversmithing techniques. Top Navajo jewelry artists pay homage to the techniques of the past while pushing into new expressions with exotic metals and stones gleaned from around the world. The culmination is an array of jewelry expression from classic Navajo concho belts and bracelets to modern forms expressed in precious metals and sparkling gems.

Navajo metalsmiths were not only responsible for the inception of Navajo jewelry, but the introduction of silversmithing to Hopi and Zuni artisans. One of the most prominent early Navajo jewelry silversmiths, Atsidi Sani, learned metalsmithing techniques from a Mexican man living near Mount Taylor, New Mexico. He is often credited with the emergence of Navajo silver jewelry, first by teaching his four sons and they in turn, teaching others in the newly formed Navajo Nation.

Early Navajo jewelry consisted of simple earrings, ketohs, belt fasteners and bracelets. Traders provided tools and supplies such as silver coins and slugs. More important, traders gave Indian silversmiths a place to trade and sell their work. In the 1920’s sheet silver replaced silver slugs, allowing artists to work more quickly since they no longer needed to melt and pound the slugs flat. A Navajo jewelry style evolved, typified by heavy silverwork hammered, bent and molded, either alone or sometimes around stones.
----Excerpt from A Guide To Indian Jewelry in the Southwest by Georgiana Kennedy Simpson